Margherita Raso: “Casting the tempo”

May 30 – October 24 2021
Bell tower of the Abbey of Santa Maria in Lucedio, Municipality of Trino (Vercelli)
Curated by Paola Nicolin
Music for the work Canto For The Flooded Field composed by Kali Malone
reservations required with guided tours on https://faiprenotazioni.fondoambiente.it
Info www.aptitudeforthearts.com
Promoted by APTITUDEfortheARTS in collaboration with the Province of Vercelli and the municipality of Trino and FAI Giovani delegazione di Vercelli

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With the project Casting The Tempo by Margherita Raso, APTITUDEforthearts is proud to inaugurate its program inside the bell tower of the Abbey of Santa Maria in Lucedio, in the Municipality of Trino (Vercelli), on May 30th, 2021.

An architectural complex created by the Cistercian monks from approximately 1123, located a few kilometers away from the city center of Vercelli in the town of Trino, this place is not only a masterpiece of sacred architecture, as yet not properly known, but also a model of sustainable economy and the prime example of a place of production and meditation linked to the culture of rice.

Margherita Raso (Lecco, 1991) – one of the most promising Italian artists of her generation, attentive to the language of sculpture and its different forms and materials – confronted herself with the architectural complex by realizing a significant new sculptural production travelling within the bell tower of the Abbey.

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Casting The Tempo draws inspiration from the history, architecture, and agricultural surroundings of the Santa Maria Abbey. The artist’s intervention brings to bear the ancient craft of Jacquard through a series of textile sculptures that interpret the surrounding flooded rice fields and baroque murals adorning the abbey’s facade.

The images, brought to the surface thanks to the interweaving of warp and weft, are the result of a photographic survey of the landscape. Starting from this mapping drawn by a drone employed for the study, Margherita Raso has operated with subtraction, exactly as if photography was a marble block ready to be sculpted. The image was broken down into its details in order to develop an investigation of light and colour, drawing on the famous painting by Angelo Morbelli Per ottanta centesimi – kept in the Borgogna museum of Vercelli – like an important visual and methodical source of inspiration.

The textiles bring the exterior – the rice field – inside the space, soliciting a series of reflections on the changing landscape, and the rhythm by which seasons define the relationship between human and nature.

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Winding through the sculptures towards the top of the bell tower, the visitor can peer into a small threshold exposing the residue of a pipe organ mural, painted on the back of the Church’s façade: an imagined object, immaterial yet depicted solid and tangible in its presence, its image and symbolism powerfully echoing within the atmosphere. It is a visual presence charged with a longing that evokes the memory of the fervid musical activity of the Church, known by the amateurs for its wonderful acoustic.

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To bring this presence to life, Raso collaborated with the American-Swedish composer Kali Malone. Malone crafted an original musical composition for pipe organ by interpreting the binary code (0-1) of a microscopic extract of Raso’s jacquard weavings. Together they achieve a remarkable osmosis of visual art into sound, giving breath to a harmonic continuum that plays diffused throughout the interiors of the bell tower and rings far into the surrounding fields, echoing centenary memories of chants and labour.

If, on one hand, the fabric acts as a metaphor for the exterior, for the context, for the world around us, on the other hand, the sound is, in turn, a metaphor for the interior, for inwardness, for those aspects most spiritual, meditative and introspective that are connected to a labour made of repetitive gestures – almost automatic and mechanic – and of the intimacies and chants that accompany them. In this sense the rice field is a landscape whose labour mirrors the contemporary places of production that are destined to broaden the analysis on work Today.

APTITUDEforthearts is a project of art in the territory entirely dedicated to female artistic research, conceived and promoted by Marina Roncarolo with the artistic direction of Paola Nicolin.

APTITUDEforthearts was born from a reflection on “taking care” understood as an attitude, innate or acquired, rooted in the universe of the feminine. This program invites artists of different generations to look at the landscape and the peculiar agricultural context of the Vercelli area not only as sources from which to draw inspiration for their own creative practice, but above all, as subjects to take care of, bringing attention, gestures and new and regenerating looks.

The historical memory and the very nature of the territory of Vercelli and eastern Piedmont – closely linked to the rice supply chain – are strongly characterized by the presence of women, once as a workforce and today as a peculiar presence both in entrepreneurship and in cultural activities. Hence, Marina Roncarolo and Paola Nicolin chose to look at female artistic production: to tell the story and nature of an area poorly known and to enhance both its intangible and artistic heritage, but also its architectural one. This, through the recovery of historic spaces which are either undergoing restoration, or abandoned, or awaiting treatment. These places can be temporarily rediscovered and revitalized by the presence of a different gaze.

The project Casting The Tempo by Margherita Raso for APTITUDEforthearts, curated by Paola Nicolin, was made possible through the kind support of Provincia di Vercelli, Comune di Trino, Comitato di Lucedio, Ecomuseo delle Terre d’Acqua, and the collaboration of Sopraintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti e Paesaggio of Biella, Novara, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Vercelli, FAI Giovani delegazione di Vercelli, Fondazione Museo Francesco Borgogna, LCA Studio Legale, Principato di Lucedio srl, Borgo Ramezzana Country House, Antica Fabbrica Passamanerie Massia Vittorio 1843, Clerici Tessuto & C. SpA, FIMI Group and Fanta-MLN, Milan.

We would like to thank Ente Nazionale Risi, Milano, Manfredi Perrone and Paolo Schenone, Brand Gnu Srl.

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Caption:

Photo 1:Margherita Raso, Lentezza No. 1, 2021
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts

Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 2: Margherita Raso, Lentezza No. 1, 2021
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 3: Margherita Raso, Lentezza No. 2, 2021
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 4: Margherita Raso, Lentezza No. 2, 2021 (dettaglio / detail)
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 5: Margherita Raso, Canto for The Flooded Field, 2021
Musica per organo a canne, 40’36” / Music for pipe organ, 40’36”; dittico, stampa inkjet su carta, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm ciascuno / diptych, inkjet print on paper, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm each
Musica composta e registrata da Kali Malone / Music composed and recorded by Kali Malone
Courtesy l’artista, Kali Malone e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist, Kali Malone and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 6: Margherita Raso, Canto for The Flooded Field, 2021
Musica per organo a canne, 40’36” / Music for pipe organ, 40’36”; dittico, stampa inkjet su carta, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm ciascuno / diptych, inkjet print on paper, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm each
Musica composta e registrata da Kali Malone / Music composed and recorded by Kali Malone
Courtesy l’artista, Kali Malone e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist, Kali Malone and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 7: Margherita Raso, Lentezza No. 3, 2021
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 8: Margherita Raso
Lentezza No. 3, 2021 (dettaglio / detail)
Tubi di rame, tessuto jacquard, passamanerie, filo piombo / Copper pipes, jacquard fabric, trimmings, lead wire
300 x 400 x 100 cm
Courtesy l’artista e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso

Photo 9: Margherita Raso
Canto For The Flooded Field, 2021
Musica per organo a canne, 40’36” / Music for pipe organ, 40’36”; dittico, stampa inkjet su carta, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm ciascuno / diptych, inkjet print on paper, 34,5 x 50 x 4,8 cm each
Musica composta e registrata da Kali Malone / Music composed and recorded by Kali Malone
Courtesy l’artista, Kali Malone e Fanta-MLN, Milano / Courtesy of the artist, Kali Malone and Fanta-MLN, Milan
Prodotta da APTITUDEforthearts / Produced by APTITUDEforthearts
Installation view of Casting The Tempo, curated by Paola Nicolin, Santa Maria in Lucedio Abbey, Vercelli (IT)
Photo: Beppe Raso